Conventionally, during development of a new commodity, a user layer, commodity specifications including a design, an appropriate price, and the like have been determined on the basis of data obtained by market research and the like conducted in advance.
This means that it is impossible to determine whether a development result (new commodity) will be accepted by the market before the commodity is actually put on sale. Therefore, there exists a high risk that it becomes impossible to recoup money invested in development and production if demand is erroneously forecasted.
Consequently, money invested in development of commodities whose development ended in failure needs to be recovered by some hit commodities, so that commodities are priced higher than their values.
Also, with the conventional technique, commodities are sold after production on the basis of estimation, so that an advertisement cost, a sales cost, and a marketing cost run up and these costs are added to their prices. This results in a situation where commodities are further high priced.
Meanwhile, also on the user side, made-to-order commodities are expensive and it is unrealistic to purchase such commodities. Therefore, under present circumstances, users have no other choice but to purchase commodities developed by manufacturers on the basis of forecasts and they purchase and use, with tolerance, commodities whose specifications differ from those that they really want.
In order solve the technical problem, the present invention provides a technique with which specifications of a commodity and, in particular, design information of the commodity are presented to users through a network, and wishes of the users concerning the presented specifications are collected as information. Then, the final specifications of the commodity are determined and demand for the commodity is also grasped. This makes it possible to develop a commodity with as little risk as possible and to allow the user to obtain a commodity having specifications that satisfy the user's wishes at a relatively low price.